The other day I was flipping through the news channels and saw a video clip of the granddaddies of rock ‘n’ roll. Story was that the Rolling Stones would soon be playing China, but Big Brother, Beijing Office, said they could not sing four of their signature songs: No ”Brown Sugar,” no ”Honky-Tonk Women,” no ”Let’s Spend the Night Together,” no ”Beast of Burden.”
OK, well, the destoning of the Stones was happening in China, which doesn’t have a First Amendment.
The thing is, I made an immediate mental connection between the story about the expurgated Stones and the sight of the seriously quelled White House Press Corps who appeared — if you can even call it that — at President Bush’s press conference on March 6.
The so-called watchdogs were so sluggish that evening that I felt as if I were looking at the recovery room of a spay-neuter clinic.
Which would be funny if it weren’t so serious.
These are strange days, indeed. Has our sweet land of liberty gone plumb through the looking glass? Consider:
* A man (in his 60s, and an attorney for the state) was cuffed in New York for wearing and refusing to doff an anti-war T-shirt at a shopping mall; he was first accosted by mall security and then by police. He had purchased the shirt at the mall.
* A distinguished reporter (internationally renowned, Pulitzer Prize-winner) was labeled on CNN as ”the closest thing American journalism has to a terrorist” by the subject of the writer’s latest piece. The story raised questions about the pro-war luminary’s potential to gain financially from the defense policies he pushes in meetings with the government and on news talk shows.
* Members of the U.S. Senate, our nation’s deliberative body, have been in a lather to ban a rarely used abortion procedure instead of debating the commitment of American might to something much of the rest of the world doesn’t think is right.
* Members of the House, faced with a teetering economy, mushrooming deficits, and the scandalous fact that 40 million Americans (half of them children) are uninsured for health care, took decisive action and de-Frenched the fries and toast served at their Capitol Hill eateries.
* And, back to where we started, White House reporters looked like ”zombies” in what was only the second prime-time news conference President Bush has held in his more than two years in office. (The term ”zombies” came from ABC News correspondent Terry Moran, who was there.)
If you don’t mind my saying so, this certainly is no time for zombies.
Not with a quarter-million of our troops poised for war on foreign soil, turmoil in the United Nations, our own states in dire straits, and all manner of people experiencing every measure of high anxiety.
”A mini-Alamo for American journalism,” said one critic of the conference in which the only thing pressed were about three points that the President kept repeating, no matter what the question was.
A recap: The President did not call on reporters with raised hands. He read from a list of names (put together by press secretary Ari Fleischer), and when one reporter pressed a point, the President said, ”This is scripted.” And, again, the reporters were sedate, to say the least.
I phoned Paul McMasters, the First Amendment ombudsman for the Freedom Forum, to get some perspective about what had occurred.
McMasters said every administration has tried to hone such meetings to a high art — staying on message, staying on point.
But, he added, the context of this press conference was important: CBS News anchor Dan Rather has taken a lot of flak for his interview with Saddam Hussein. In times of war and in this age of terrorism, there is a perception that being aggressive in doing journalism or questioning officials is the same thing as being subversive, and that has readership and ratings implications. And, ground rules for journalists’ access — whether it’s at press conferences or being embedded with military troops — are being ratcheted up.
McMasters cautions, ”It is worrisome. Without aggressive and independent reporting, the public discourse will go uninformed. . . . If the press doesn’t get important information to the people, no one will.”
Then I called Larry McQuillan, who has covered presidents and attended presidential press conferences since Jimmy Carter’s day. Today McQuillan is a White House reporter for USA Today, and he attended the March 6 event. McQuillan sat on the front row during the press conference. When it became apparent the President was reading names of reporters off a list, McQuillan stopped raising his hand. And he was never called upon.
He said he had never seen a president conduct a press conference like this one, in which the audience — the press corps — was ignored. ”In a way, we were just devices,” he said.
McQuillan added that, despite his close proximity to the lectern, President Bush spoke so softly that he had difficulty hearing some of his answers.
Why didn’t the press balk? Why didn’t reporters become more aggressive? ”Everyone knew this press conference would be used to explain to Americans why he could be sending their sons and daughters to war,” said McQuillan. ”I think we felt the seriousness and gravity of the situation. That may have been why we didn’t weigh in.”
Two last points to clear up about the conference: The reporters did not submit their questions in advance. And they did not know who would be called upon until the President spoke their names.
So much of what’s happening now doesn’t make sense to me.
All I know is, we’re supposed to be able to wear T-shirts bearing political messages without the threat of arrest.
We’re supposed to have a Senate and a Congress that advise before they consent.
And we’re supposed to press presidents and their advisers for answers and for accountability when it comes to all matters of state, but especially war.
I’ll end this dirge on a musical note.
A couple of weeks ago, Simon and Garfunkel opened the Grammys with what I thought was a brilliant and ironic choice of songs. Earlier I had heard (on Rush Limbaugh’s show, so it must be true) that musicians had been warned away from making political statements during the program. And most of them toed that line.
But the evening was not without a subversive statement.
It came right at the beginning of the show, and it was made by an aging duo who had the stones to sing, ”The Sound of Silence”:
‘Fools,’ said I, ‘You do not know
Silence like a cancer grows.
Hear my words that I might teach you,
Take my arms that I might reach you.’
But my words like silent raindrops fell,
And echoed
In the wells of silence . . .
